The increasing complexity and requirement for miniaturization of electronic devices imposes corresponding demands on connector design.
An insulation displacement connector for flat cable is taught by Japanese Patent 63-86373 published 1988, and comprises an insulating housing having a front mating face and a wire connecting face and a series of terminals, each stamped and formed in one-piece from metal stock and comprising a mating portion and a wire connecting portion at respective opposite ends of a conducting portion. The terminals are mounted in the housing with respective mating portions in a common plane at the mating face as a row extending transversely of a mating direction, and the wire connecting portions at the wire connecting face, each wire connecting portion comprising a plate formed with a wire receiving slot opening to a wire receiving mouth so that opposed edges of the slot will penetrate insulation of a cable wire forcibly inserted transversely of an axis thereof through the wire receiving mouth into the slot and effect electrical connection to a conductive core of the cable wire.
In the prior connector not only are slotted plates arranged in two rows at a common level, but, in an attempt to reduce the transverse width of the connector by narrowing the effective pitch of the wire connecting portions below that of the flat cable while avoiding interference between the connections, an additional row of slotted plate wire connecting portions is also provided at the wire connecting face, at a higher level than the other two rows so that cable wires can be terminated one above the other.
However, in the prior connector the wire connecting portions are aligned rearward with their corresponding mating contact portions, thereby requiring an additional row of mating contact portions at the mating face which increases undesirably the overall size of the connector.
As the transverse pitch of the terminals is normally matched to the pitch of the flat cable, the external dimensions of the connector are determined significantly by the diameters and quantities of cables to be terminated thereby, while as the cables have a coating of uniform thickness it is common for the mating part of the terminal, (which has a cross sectional size or diameter (width) corresponding to that of the conductive core), to be narrower than the external diameter of the cable wire, a narrower mating contact pitch is theoretically possible, which would permit the mating face to be more compact than if the mating contact portions were required to form additional rows.